Industrial nations found they needed more:
- Raw materials for their factories
- More food to feed the urban populations
Agriculture
- Before Europeans, Africans engaged in subsistence farming
- Subsistence farming = growing only as much food as you need
- After Europeans, this system was replaced with cash-crop farming
- Now whole plantations were devoted to specific cash crops like coffee, rubber, sugar
- Crops were exported to Europe
- Growing middle class also created demand for beef
- Cattle ranches in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay produced lots of beef for export
Guano
- This increase in agriculture caused demand for fertilize to increase
- Guano = bird poop, is an excellent fertilizer
- Vast quantities of guano had accumulated in Peru and Chile for centuries
- Between 1840 and 1880, vast amounts of guano were dug by hand and shipped for export
- The people digging were often indentured Chinese or Polynesian laborers
Raw Materials
- Imperial powers exploited colonies for raw materials which could be turned into manufacturing goods back home
Cotton
- Cotton used for textiles
- Britain originally got 80% of its cotton from the US but the American Civil War completely halted these exports
- Needing a different place to get cotton, Britain turns to Egypt
- Also got cotton from India
- Britain actually banned Indian cotton textiles compete with British textiles
Rubber
- Crucial component for tires and in industrial equipment and infrastructure
- Comes from rubber trees which grew
Palm Oil
- Great lubricant for factory machines
- Produced in West Africa
- Became a cash crop and enslaved laborers were used to produce it
Diamonds
- Cecil Rhodes was English businessman who founded the De Beers Mining Company
- Would later become the prime minster of Cape Colony and his racist policies would pave the way for apartheid in the 1900s
Global Consequences
Increasingly Connected Global Economy
- Imperial power extracted raw resources from colonies and sent to imperial power
- Imperial power turned it into manufactured good
- Sold back to colonies
- Also imperial countries began to import food from colonies to meet rising population
- Made possible thanks to new technologies like refrigeration
Narrowing and Weakening of Colonial Economies
- As imperial powers heavily emphasized growth of cash crops, other agricultural crops were neglected
- These crops tend to be the one that actually feed people
- Also they made colonies completely economically dependent on a single export or two
- If the crop failed then uh big trouble